Vinyl Bootlegs Are Back!

Although bootleg recordings date back more than a hundred years, they first appeared as wax cylinders, acetate recorders and magnetic tape. Nothing started showing up on vinyl until 1969 when two hippies pressed up some unreleased Bob Dylan recordings and sold copies of an illegal record called Great White Wonder out of the truck of a car. When that turned into a success, other–ahem–enterprising music fans set about manufacturing and distributing unauthorized vinyl records for the next decade or so. When CDs came along in the 80s, they became the preferred medium and the vinyl bootleg disappeared. But guess what’s back? With the resurgence in legitimate vinyl, the old-old-school boot is back. Some of those record pressing plants are using their spare capacity to take us back to the 60s and 70s. The numbers are small, but they’re growing. And that’s really annoying to the music industry.